Raptor Red

What an entertaining book! Famous paleontologist Robert Bakker has written a biography of one particular dinosaur who lived 120 million years ago in what is now Utah. Appropriately, she is known as a Utah Raptor and is named Raptor Red. It is the story of her life as pieced together through her fossil record and paleontological research. I am 71 years old. When I was a child and first learned about dinosaurs, they were presented as giant, cold blooded lizard related animals. So, too, was Robert Bakker. However, Dr. Bakker now convincingly argues just the opposite. He believes that they were warm blooded, mobile, intelligent, social animals. Raptor Red reflects this proposition. Some of the professional criticism this book received when first published was that it was not well written (I disagree) and that he mixed up some of the fauna and animal life into the time frame. I'm okay with this because Dr. Bakker never intended this book to be a professional journal, but rather an entertaining novel in which he could present his theories about dinosaurs and their behavior, as well as teach a bit about evolution itself to the general, non scientific public. In this attempt he does an excellent job. Written from the point of view of an outside observer, this unusual story is highly entertaining for those of us who have always had a soft spot for dinosaurs. By the way, Utah Raptor is the dinosaur featured in Jurassic Park that is not T-Rex. Coincidently, the movie (and those raptors) were being made at the same time as the first fossils were being discovered of Utah Raptor, justifying the larger size of the raptors in the movie. Velociraptors were much smaller. Calvin would definitely own this book!

Unexpectedly emotional. Thrilling and educational. And kind of a sad read, nostalgic.

Not everyone can write a book about a dinosaur from the dinosaur's point of view and get away with it. In fact, few have ever tried. Bakker succeeds in this undertaking for several reasons, not the least of which is because he really knows his science. The last time I read a book of this kind, in which the author attempted to evoke the life experience of another animal from the animal's point of view, was when I read Gordon Allred's great little book "Dori, the Mallard" way back in the late 60's. He's the only guy I ever knew who could describe what it was like to be a duck from the duck's point of view. Bakker's book is equally compelling. The second reason this book works is because it resonates with a rare kind of credibility. No one really knows if Raptor Red or any other raptor was really sentient, nor does anyone really know whether the abstract ideas Bakker posits for her were actually part of her way of intepreting her life experience. No one knows because we simply can't know such things, but the very notion of it is compelling for those who have witnessed sentience in other species in our own life experiences. The physical attributes he attributes to her, such as the size of her brain relative to her overall mass and structure, is reasonable. The conclusion he draws, that she was unusually intelligent because she possessed a big enough brain to sustain thoughtful sentience, is a product of reasonable scientific extension of known facts. The keenness he attributes to her olfactory and visual senses is acceptable because it is based on sound scientific information that is universally known and widely accepted. Her ability to reason, solve problems, recall past experiences in the context of current challenges, discriminate between one cultural norm and another, interpret scent messages, and so on, are all attributes commonly demonstrated by other highly evolved, warm-blooded creatures living in our own time. The question he asks is a reasonable one - if we find these characteristics in sentient creatures of our own time, why couldn't they have existed in times long gone by? And if they did, what was it like to experience the world of their time from their point of view? It is Bakker's erudite and imaginative ability to explore the possible answers to these questions, without lapsing into our peculiar brand of twentieth century Disneyfication, that makes this a meaningful and valuable book. Bakker is a rare find - in the world of laudatory science fiction there are very few authors who could have made this book work. For this reason alone, if there were no other reasons, I would recommend this book to others without qualification. Finally, I found this book not only well written in terms of its science but as a story told from the first person's point of view. It is well paced, liberally laced with explanatory science which informs without boring or overwhelming the reader. When Bakker makes a leap of faith not shared by others in hi

I wouldn't have thought what Robert Bakker has done in this book was possible! Certainly his academic work grabbed the public imagination, and his factual book "The Dinosaur Heresies" stirred up controversy with his theory that dinosaurs were actually fast, warm-blooded animals quite like modern mammals and birds. But to write a full-length novel about the day-to-day life of a dinosaur? How interesting could that be? Well, maybe it's me - when I was a boy I used to devour the "animal books" of Jack London and Ernest Seton Thompson - but I just couldn't put "Raptor Red" down. You hear that said a lot, but this time it was literally true. Told in the present tense throughout, this story simply rips along, going from one thrilling episode to another and astonishing you with little-known but exciting facts and informed speculation. By the way, the heroine (you have to call her that) turns out to be almost identical to the "velociraptors" in the film "Jurassic Park". At the time, everyone thought Steven Spielberg had contradicted all the scientific evidence by making his raptors twice as big as human beings - then in 1982, the year before the film was released, someone dug up fossils from a raptor that was almost identical to Spielberg's. That animal - christened Utahraptor - is Raptor Red, and she tangles with some scary opposition along the way. You wouldn't think there would be much that could threaten a fast-moving 500-pound monster with razor-sharp claws and teeth... until page 16, anyway. Bakker is a born writer, and not only does he keep the action humming along, he even finds time for a lot more character development than you will find in many novels about people. Within a few pages you will find yourself identifying with Raptor Red, urging her on as she stalks prey, holding your breath when she is in danger, even sighing when she finds a mate. Then you pinch yourself and remember that she'd have YOU for dinner in about half of no time at all. The key lies in Bakker's belief that some dinosaurs - certainly utahraptors - were highly intelligent, perhaps as much so as wolves and bears, or even the great apes. That opens up a whole new dimension that most renderings of the prehistoric world have utterly lacked. Although it's a compact and inexpensive paperback, "Raptor Red" has been carefully produced, with considerable attention to detail. Starting with the holographic portrait of Raptor Red herself on the cover - it's corny, but I liked it. Every one of the 26 chapters begins with a little thumbnail drawing of a type of dinosaur mentioned in the story. And Bakker has written an interesting and instructive preface and epilogue, to explain some facts he couldn't reasonably fit into the book itself. If you are in the least interested in dinosaurs, or animals of any kind - read it! You can't go wrong.

I loved this book. Adults and children can read it and it is full of action and thrills and yet is not full of foul language so that goes to show that you can have an excellent book that everyone can read and enjoy. If a person is interested in dinos, then this is a book to read.

When Jurrasic Park hit the theaters, it stunned and excited the moviegoing public. The tyrannasaurous rex, the most popular dinosaur, was depicted as a dangerous and ferocious animal, unstoppable and invincible. But the real star of the movie wasn't the T-Rex. For his movie, Steven Spielberg introduced an even more terrifying and ferocious dinosaur, the velociraptor. The velociraptor gave Jurrasic park the real momentum it needed to soar to the top, becoming a huge hit. What some people don't know is that Spielberg made the velociraptor much bigger than it was in reality. This departure from realism worried some working on the movie, until an amazing discovery was made. The first fossil of a giant raptor was found while the movie was being filmed. Paleontoligists named it Utahraptor. This is the remarkable species of predators that this equally remarkable book is about. Robert Bakker's book, Raptor Red, has been compared to Jurrasic Park. However, I disagree with that comparison. While Jurrasic Park focuses more on the science and the desperate struggle to survive against superior predators, Raptor Red gives us a look into the mind of a female Utahraptor. It shows the reader what Utahraptor society was probably like, by analyzing the behavior of wolves and eagles. It shows us how the Utahraptors hunted in groups. And it also shows us how intelligent, cunning, and efficient these amazing superpredators were. The book begins with a thrilling account of a Utahraptor hunting expedition, which draws the reader in and refuses to let go. When Red rejoins her sister, the complexity of Utahraptor society is shown beautifully. I'm sure every reader will enjoy Raptor Red's intelligence, ingenuity, and inquisitivness as she explores her world, fighting off larger and more powerful allocanthosaurus and smaller but more numerous dynonychs. With the unique blend of action and information, this book will capture any reader from the first page, and hold on to them, not just to the last page, but beyond. Even after having reading it twice, one cannot expierience any boredom. I highly recommend this book to everyone. You don't have to be dinosaur fan to enjoy such a good book.